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Friday, December 30, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wiener Library reopening casts further light on Nazi horrors
From the TimeOut blog: Wiener Library reopening casts further light on Nazi horrors
There’s a Nazi version of the card game Happy Families with portraits of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels on the front of the cards; a story book with illustrations of grotesquely hooked-nose characters to teach children how to spot a Jew; and a version of ‘Mein Kampf’ in English, autographed by Hitler. These startling artefacts can be seen at an exhibition called ‘A is for Adolf –Teaching Children Nazi Values’, that illustrates the range of propaganda targeted at young children under the Nazi regime. The exhibition is the first to be held at the Wiener Library in Bloomsbury which re-opens on December 2 after a £3.5 million redevelopment programme.
The library, formerly located in Devonshire Street, is one of the world’s leading archives on the Nazi era. Its stunning new home in Russell Square boasts a state-of-the-art exhibition area, a light-filled reading room and the latest climate and humidity controlled technology to protect its collection of more than one million items, including 65,000 books and 17,000 images. The Library was established in 1933 by Alfred Wiener, a German Jew who fled his home for Amsterdam when Hitler came to power. There he set up the Jewish Central Information Office, collecting and disseminating information about events happening in Nazi Germany.
The collection was transferred to London in 1939 with Wiener making the resources available to British government intelligence departments. After the war, the library provided material to the United Nations War Crimes Commission and was instrumental in bringing some of the Nazi war criminals to justice. During the 1950s and 1960s it continued to gather eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust. The extensive library features books (many of them unique to the library) covering the history and documentation of the Holocaust and of Jewish refugees in the UK, as well as works on anti-Nazi resistance, central European Jewish history, war crimes trials, anti-semitism, Holocaust denial literature and comparative genocide studies.
But it is the artefacts in the collections that really bring the subject to life. Diaries of Jews living in Nazi Germany provide moving eye witness accounts of events such as Kristallnacht in November 1938, where Jewish homes, shops and synagogues were destroyed by stormtroopers and civilians. Personal papers include the notebooks, diaries and correspondence written by the German Jewish fur trader Philipp Manes, that provide a detailed account of his incarceration in the transit camp Theresienstadt – his story only breaking off when he and his wife are deported to Auschwitz on Oct 28 1944, where he later died. His daughter, who fled Germany just before the war, donated his emotional memoirs to the centre. Around one third of the collection is from the pre-war period.
For famillies that have lost relatives in the Holocaust, the library helps with tracing relatives through its archives and it is also an important resource for authors, academics and filmmakers. The centre is staffed by a large number of volunteers, many of whom arrived in Britain on the Kindertransport (the mission that rescued Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Europe). ‘Now more than ever, it is important to collect and conserve personal stories of the period,’ says Bridget McGing, the Wiener Library’s development director. ‘The generation which survived the Holocaust is passing away and it is important to safeguard their stories for future generations.’
Rebecca Taylor
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Glaser Heirs Sell Van de Velde II Painting Back to the Rijksmuseum
From MMD Newswire.com: Glaser Heirs Sell Van de Velde II Painting Back to the Rijksmuseum
Amsterdam and New York (MMD Newswire) December 21, 2011 -- Following the restitution of the Jan Van de Velde II painting "Winter Landscape" to the heirs of Professor Dr. Curt Glaser, his heirs have now sold the artwork back to the Rijksmuseum. The agreement follows the restitution of the artwork as recommended by the Dutch Restitutions Committee which found that it had been sold due to Nazi persecution in May 1933 auctions in Berlin.
Professor Curt Glaser was the head of the Berlin State Art Library when he was forced from his position in 1933 by a Nazi law forbidding Jews from holding German civil servant positions. In addition, he was also forced out of his state owned apartment in the Prinz Albrecht Strasse in Berlin. After his removal from his apartment the Gestapo established their notorious headquarters in the building where he had lived.
Following the loss of his job and his apartment, Glaser was also unable to write for German publications about the German art scene and decided he had no other choice than to leave Germany. As an advocate for modern art he was a target for the Nazis who regarded art as an important part of their politics.
As a consequence thereof, Glaser sold most of his art collection in May 1933 auctions in Berlin. After WWII, since it was not known what had become of these artworks, his heirs claimed the loss of his collection in German damages proceedings, which found the collection was lost due to Nazi persecution and awarded a small damage compensation for its loss.
In 1998, as a result of the Washington Conference on Nazi looted assets, the Netherlands established a commission to review the possibility of Nazi looted art in its museums. As a result of this search, the Glaser heirs were contacted by the Rijksmuseum about the Van de Velde painting which was part of the Rijksmuseum's collection. The artwork was subsequently restituted to the Glaser heirs following the Dutch Restitutions Committee's recommendation finding that Prof. Glaser was a Nazi victim and that the painting was sold due to Nazi persecution.
The painting has now been sold back to the Rijksmuseum and both the Glaser heirs and the Rijksmuseum wish to thank each other for the responsible manner in which this case has been handled.
For further information regarding other Glaser artworks lost in the May 1933 Berlin auctions, a list can be found at the German government website www.lostart.de.
Amsterdam and New York (MMD Newswire) December 21, 2011 -- Following the restitution of the Jan Van de Velde II painting "Winter Landscape" to the heirs of Professor Dr. Curt Glaser, his heirs have now sold the artwork back to the Rijksmuseum. The agreement follows the restitution of the artwork as recommended by the Dutch Restitutions Committee which found that it had been sold due to Nazi persecution in May 1933 auctions in Berlin.
Professor Curt Glaser was the head of the Berlin State Art Library when he was forced from his position in 1933 by a Nazi law forbidding Jews from holding German civil servant positions. In addition, he was also forced out of his state owned apartment in the Prinz Albrecht Strasse in Berlin. After his removal from his apartment the Gestapo established their notorious headquarters in the building where he had lived.
Following the loss of his job and his apartment, Glaser was also unable to write for German publications about the German art scene and decided he had no other choice than to leave Germany. As an advocate for modern art he was a target for the Nazis who regarded art as an important part of their politics.
As a consequence thereof, Glaser sold most of his art collection in May 1933 auctions in Berlin. After WWII, since it was not known what had become of these artworks, his heirs claimed the loss of his collection in German damages proceedings, which found the collection was lost due to Nazi persecution and awarded a small damage compensation for its loss.
In 1998, as a result of the Washington Conference on Nazi looted assets, the Netherlands established a commission to review the possibility of Nazi looted art in its museums. As a result of this search, the Glaser heirs were contacted by the Rijksmuseum about the Van de Velde painting which was part of the Rijksmuseum's collection. The artwork was subsequently restituted to the Glaser heirs following the Dutch Restitutions Committee's recommendation finding that Prof. Glaser was a Nazi victim and that the painting was sold due to Nazi persecution.
The painting has now been sold back to the Rijksmuseum and both the Glaser heirs and the Rijksmuseum wish to thank each other for the responsible manner in which this case has been handled.
For further information regarding other Glaser artworks lost in the May 1933 Berlin auctions, a list can be found at the German government website www.lostart.de.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Gifts From Hitler? Pompidou Admits Harboring Three Nazi-Looted Paintings Since 1973
From Art Info: Gifts From Hitler? Pompidou Admits Harboring Three Nazi-Looted Paintings Since 1973
As researchers dig deeper into the activities of French institutions during the dark time of the German Occupation in World War II, ever more art controversies are coming to light. During the war, thousands of artworks moved through the former Musée du Jeu de Paume (or Tennis Court Museum) after being confiscated from Jewish dealers and collectors with the help of the Gestapo and the Commissariat for Jewish Questions. We now know that this is what happened to three paintings by artist Fédor Löwenstein that ended up in the permanent collection of the Pompidou Center.
According to Rue89, the Pompidou Center has admitted that "Les Peupliers (Poplars)," "Arbres (Trees)," and "Composition" were originally pillaged by the Nazis. Alain Prévet, head of the Archives of French National Museums, and Thierry Bajou, head conservator for the National Heritage of French Museums, made the discovery after studying the invaluable archives of Rose Valland, a conservator at the Jeu de Paume who single-handedly kept track of the art crimes perpetrated by the Nazis at the museum during the Occupation. Valland's records have allowed numerous artworks to be returned to their rightful heirs.
Over the course of the Occupation, Hitler and Göring selected artworks that they liked and had them sent back to Germany, destined for their personal collections, to be given as gifts to high-ranking Nazis, or to be sold on the black market. In 1942, Valland noted that several works that were "not in keeping with the aesthetic of the Third Reich" were stored separately in the museum's so-called "Martyrs Room." Valland listed six works by Löwenstein that were held there.
After the Liberation, the Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg, which had been in charge of confiscating "degenerate" or "Jewish-influenced" art, left behind a handful of photographic negatives of the Marytrs Room. Prévet and Bajou digitized the images and enlarged them, comparing what they saw with Valland's inventory. This allowed them to identify 60 paintings, including two by Löwenstein. When they entered the artist's name into the Pompidou Center's collection database, three works came up, all ostensibly donated in a mysterious gift to the museum in 1973.
Working with the Pompidou Center, the team discovered that the leadership of the museum, unable to account for the Löwenstein paintings, simply transformed them into gifts in order to establish a provenance for the works in their inventory. The paintings have now been removed from that inventory and put on a list of stolen works maintained by the Musées Nationaux Récupération project. The next step is to find the rightful heirs.
This restitution case is far from the first to arise in European museums. Last April, the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg had to return Gustave Klimt's "Litzlberg am Attersee," which had been stolen from Amalie Redlich, a collector who died after being deported to a Polish ghetto. Her sole heir has since sold the painting, which fetched $40.4 million at a Sotheby's auction last month. In October, a casino in southern Germany returned a work by Juriaen Pool the Younger to three universities who were the beneficiaries of art dealer Max Stern's will. The universities decided to donate the piece to the Amsterdam Museum.
In yet another recent case, Zürich's Kunsthaus acknowledged that "Madame Le Suire" by Albert von Keller had been pilfered by the Nazis, but the rightful owner's heirs offered to donate the work to the museum on one condition — that the painting be displayed with the following information: "Stolen from Alfred Sommerguth in 1939 by the Nazis. Gift of his heirs and of Mrs. Hannelore Müller in 2010."
Monday, December 12, 2011
Nazi looted painting returned to National Museum in Warsaw
Polish Radio: Nazi looted painting returned to National Museum in Warsaw
A looted work by one of Poland's most celebrated fin-de-siecle painters has been returned to the National Museum in Warsaw after it cropped up at a German auction house.
It is only thanks to the generosity of two private donors that the picture has become part of the public collection once again.
In the Artist's Studio, by Leon Wyczolkowski (1852-1936), was initially the property of eminent doctor and art collector Konstanty Karnowski, who purchased the work in 1883.
Karnowski kept the painting in his apartment on Krakowskie Przedmiescie, Warsaw's grandest thoroughfare, but donated his entire collection to the National Museum in 1918, when Poland regained its independence.
The painting remained at the museum until the Second World War, disappearing in unknown circumstances in 1944 during the German occupation of the city.
When the work cropped up at a Berlin auction house in 2009, Poland's Ministry of Culture endeavoured to reclaim the painting.
However, although the picture was on Poland's lists of missing works, there were no pre-war photographs that could corroborate the Polish claim.
The problem was solved thanks to the generosity of Witold Konieczny and Roman Kruszewski, co- owners of a Warsaw publishing house, who purchased the painting for 50,000 euros (223, 600 zloty), when it came up for auction again this year.
“Not for a moment did we think of keeping the picture for ourselves,” Konieczny told the Polish Press Agency.
In the Artist's Studio will go on show on 17 May next year, chiming in with the reopening of the museum after extensive renovation.
The museum will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its foundation in 2012.
A looted work by one of Poland's most celebrated fin-de-siecle painters has been returned to the National Museum in Warsaw after it cropped up at a German auction house.
It is only thanks to the generosity of two private donors that the picture has become part of the public collection once again.
In the Artist's Studio, by Leon Wyczolkowski (1852-1936), was initially the property of eminent doctor and art collector Konstanty Karnowski, who purchased the work in 1883.
Karnowski kept the painting in his apartment on Krakowskie Przedmiescie, Warsaw's grandest thoroughfare, but donated his entire collection to the National Museum in 1918, when Poland regained its independence.
The painting remained at the museum until the Second World War, disappearing in unknown circumstances in 1944 during the German occupation of the city.
When the work cropped up at a Berlin auction house in 2009, Poland's Ministry of Culture endeavoured to reclaim the painting.
However, although the picture was on Poland's lists of missing works, there were no pre-war photographs that could corroborate the Polish claim.
The problem was solved thanks to the generosity of Witold Konieczny and Roman Kruszewski, co- owners of a Warsaw publishing house, who purchased the painting for 50,000 euros (223, 600 zloty), when it came up for auction again this year.
“Not for a moment did we think of keeping the picture for ourselves,” Konieczny told the Polish Press Agency.
In the Artist's Studio will go on show on 17 May next year, chiming in with the reopening of the museum after extensive renovation.
The museum will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its foundation in 2012.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
A detective’s work at the MFA
From the Boston Globe: A detective’s work at the MFA
This spring in the Netherlands, a curator from the Museum of Fine Arts spotted a 17th-century gold medallion at the famed Maastricht art fair and knew she had to have it. There was just one problem: Nobody could tell her how the precious piece left Germany after World War II.
Enter Victoria Reed, the MFA’s curator of provenance. Her job, which is almost as rare in the museum world as is the medallion, is to research works with questionable histories both in the collection and on the MFA’s shopping list. As a result, Reed’s other job is to break curators’ hearts.
Through months of research, Reed traced the medallion to a museum in Gotha, Germany, that she knew had been looted during the Nazi era. With that information, the MFA’s jewelry curator, Yvonne Markowitz, put the brakes on its purchase. And in September, the Art Loss Register announced that S.J. Phillips Ltd., the dealer who had offered the medallion, would be returning it to the Castle Friedenstein museum.
“It shows our system is working,’’ said Reed. “It’s much better learning the information before than after this becomes a part of the collection.’’
That’s a polite way of explaining her role, which is to make sure the MFA is not embroiled in any of the controversies that have swirled through the museum world in the last decade. In this new era, museums discovered to be holding stolen items face lawsuits and claims from foreign governments that can be costly both in legal fees and in the court of public opinion.
The MFA, which like many museums has had to return works in recent years, took special care in creating Reed’s post in 2010. She is the first and only endowed curator of provenance at an American museum.
In the past, the MFA had conducted research the same way many museums do. Individual curators with expertise in a specific area were asked to do research between their other duties, whether organizing exhibits or acquiring new works. Across the country, a handful of other museum professionals research the histories of artworks as independent consultants or as one of the tasks that make up their jobs.
“It’s something we can’t do constantly the way Victoria Reed is,’’ says Martha Wolff, the curator of European painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago. “Why is that? Time pressures.’’
Another issue is resources. What makes Reed special in the museum world is that her position, funded by MFA donor Monica S. Sadler, will not be cut from the museum’s budget when finances are tight.
“That a patron of the MFA recognized the importance of the issue makes Torie’s position unique,’’ said Nancy Yeide, the head of curatorial records at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. “That’s quite noteworthy and hopefully an impetus for others to do likewise.’’
A mystery story
Reed doesn’t spend all her time in libraries, scouring old auction catalogs. She also serves as the public face of the MFA’s efforts to properly vet art works.
One summer weekday, a group of college students, most of them art history majors, crowded around Reed in a gallery as she spun a fascinating, true tale involving Nazis, art dealers, and stolen paintings. It was like a mystery story, with the art detective hunting for clues.
Afterward, several approached with questions. Asked why they were so inspired, they didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t just the story. It was Reed herself.
Just 37, Reed, who goes by the first name “Torie,’’ is no dour researcher in Coke-bottle glasses. She is lively and easy to approach, an avid runner who favors colorful dresses and heels.
“You meet a lot of curators who aren’t ready to share why they’re so excited about what they do,’’ said Caitlin Costello, 21, an undergraduate majoring in art history at the University of Pennsylvania. “Just smiling and being animated, it’s amazing how much that helps get her message across.’’
The timing of Reed’s talk couldn’t have been better. Just a few days earlier, eight years of off-and-on research had culminated in the MFA’s dramatic announcement of recognition that “Portrait of a Man and Woman in an Interior,’’ an oil painting on a wood panel by the 17th-century Dutch painter Eglon van der Neer, had probably been stolen by the Nazis and passed through a New York gallery before ending up at the MFA in 1941.
The museum agreed to pay restitution to the heir of Jewish art dealer Walter Westfeld, who died in a Nazi death camp, and in exchange, the painting would remain on the MFA’s walls. The finding would give the museum a chance to show the world that it cared deeply about righting the wrongs of the past, when swashbuckling curators acquired paintings and sculptures without doing in-depth research on whether they had been stolen.
Standing in front of the painting in the MFA’s Art of Europe department, Reed told the students of her satisfaction in being able to shed light on an important era in history. Through her work, the public will now know about Westfeld, she said. A lengthy description of the painting’s path would hang on the wall next to the picture.
‘Geeky’ path to curatorship
Growing up outside Portland, Maine, Reed was an artsy and bookish kid.
Her younger sister, Mary Reed, still teases her for what she calls a geeky streak. To satisfy her physical education requirement, Torie Reed took part in a walking club. While other teenagers were out partying, Reed took language lessons at an Italian heritage center. When she was 16, she traveled to Siena, where she worked on watercolors.
“I joke that she’s always been an old lady,’’ says Mary Reed. “She’s more grown up than anybody else.’’
Torie Reed’s path to the MFA started at Sarah Lawrence College, where she earned her degree before getting her master’s and a doctorate in art history at Rutgers University. After college, Reed worked as a research assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, after that, served as a researcher at the Princeton University Art Museum.
She started at the MFA in 2003, hired as a research fellow for provenance in the Art of Europe department to look entirely at Nazi-era issues. It was an opportune time. Just a few years earlier, museum leaders had met in Washington, D.C., in a groundbreaking conference, to create the first real push for restitution for World War II thefts.
The MFA, like most US museums, had followed the common acquire-now, research-later philosophy of collecting. But in 2000, it took a dramatic step to address that. The museum put a list of works from its permanent collection with questionable acquisition histories on the Internet in a quest to solicit more information. That turned heads in the museum world. It also led victimized families, including the Westfelds, to contact the MFA.
“Most museums have their collections online,’’ says James Cuno, the former director of the Harvard University Art Museums and current director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. “What’s different in this case, and is to be commended, is that they identified some works and set them apart from others.’’
That’s where Reed’s job began. Working on Nazi-era claims, she found her knowledge of Italian, German, and French was helpful. So was her determination to pursue all leads, whether in the MFA’s archives or by traveling to Germany to scour rarely viewed auction records and newspaper articles.
During those years, Reed decided that the World War II cases were, in a way, more complicated than those involving works dating to Roman times.
“If something was looted out of the ground in Italy, it’s a pretty clear issue,’’ she said. “Some of the Nazi-era claims are accompanied by ownership questions that may not have a paper trail. Many of the key players may be deceased. You may be dealing with 10 different archives. And even if you have the pieces lined up, there many be disagreement about how to interpret those facts.’’
The facts were often undeniable. Under Reed, the MFA resolved several claims, starting in 2004 when the museum returned to a Polish woman a 15th-century Polish painting, “Virgin and Child,’’ that Reed determined had been plundered during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 before being purchased by the MFA in 1970. Later, the MFA returned a statue stolen in Dresden, Germany, and an embroidered panel from Italy and, after making restitutions, held on to a group of 17th-century tapestries and the van der Neer.
A detective with critics
Not all of Reed’s research has resulted in guilty verdicts.
The MFA fought to keep an Oskar Kokoschka painting, “Two Nudes (Lovers),’’ after a claim was filed in 2007 by an Austrian woman. After reviewing Reed’s research, the MFA decided it had legal title to the work and even filed a lawsuit, which it won in 2009, to confirm its rights.
That led to something Reed had never faced as a behind-the-scenes player: criticism.
Raymond Dowd, a New York lawyer who has filed lawsuits over works that he maintains were taken by the Nazis, disagreed with the Kokoschka finding, particularly as it affected another case he was pursuing. On his website earlier this year, Dowd called Reed “a curator of provenance - which happens to be a synonym for a launderer of stolen artworks.’’
In an interview, Dowd refused to back down. He said the MFA and Reed should publish online the details of their investigations. He believes the MFA is, like the entire US museum community, reluctant to reach out to victims of World War II-era art looting.
“What happened in Vienna in 1938 and 1939, you either believe in the Holocaust that took place in that period and the grip that Adolph Eichmann had on those people or you’re an American museum denying that reality,’’ he said. “And she’s at the forefront of that denial.’’
Dowd’s attack bothered her deeply, Reed acknowledges, but she refuses to counterattack.
“I know that I sound defensive and I’m trying, as I get older, to sound less defensive,’’ she said. “But I think there are a lot of loud voices out there that are inaccurate.’’
The next day, Reed asks that even that mild criticism be struck from the record. She doesn’t want to come off too strong.
She does defend the MFA, which she says shares the results of all its Nazi-era provenance research on its website, on gallery labels, and in gallery talks. The only exception is when there is a legal matter that includes correspondence that is privileged.
Her understated approach is typical of Reed. She wants the evidence from her research to speak for itself without telling her boss, MFA deputy director Katherine Getchell, how to respond.
That makes perfect sense to Getchell.
“Her job is not to be a policymaker or decision maker,’’ said Getchell. “We want her focused on research and analysis and looking at the different options.’’
Reed’s job often takes her to the MFA’s off-site library at Horticultural Hall. On a recent afternoon, she sat with her notes at a table examining art history books on site. She wants to know more about a Dutch painting by Johannes Glauber, which the museum acquired from a dealer in 1979 with little knowledge of its background. She was examining a bronze from the 13th century that’s in the MFA’s Islamic art collection. There were also several works the museum was considering acquiring; she said she couldn’t reveal what those were.
“In the ’40s and ’50s, we might ask a dealer where something came from,’’ she said. “Today, we require much more information. We look at cultural property law, check stolen art databases, import and export records. If there’s a doubt, we postpone acquisition until we can clear up the question.’’
Reed shuffled through the papers on the desk as the subject of the van der Neer came up. Though the claim had been settled, many questions remained. The MFA knows the painting was probably stolen, but there’s a gap in the records from the point when it disappeared in the late 1930s to its reappearance in New York in 1941. Reed was eager to fill in the blank.
“In this work,’’ she said, “you’re never done.’’
This spring in the Netherlands, a curator from the Museum of Fine Arts spotted a 17th-century gold medallion at the famed Maastricht art fair and knew she had to have it. There was just one problem: Nobody could tell her how the precious piece left Germany after World War II.
Enter Victoria Reed, the MFA’s curator of provenance. Her job, which is almost as rare in the museum world as is the medallion, is to research works with questionable histories both in the collection and on the MFA’s shopping list. As a result, Reed’s other job is to break curators’ hearts.
Through months of research, Reed traced the medallion to a museum in Gotha, Germany, that she knew had been looted during the Nazi era. With that information, the MFA’s jewelry curator, Yvonne Markowitz, put the brakes on its purchase. And in September, the Art Loss Register announced that S.J. Phillips Ltd., the dealer who had offered the medallion, would be returning it to the Castle Friedenstein museum.
“It shows our system is working,’’ said Reed. “It’s much better learning the information before than after this becomes a part of the collection.’’
That’s a polite way of explaining her role, which is to make sure the MFA is not embroiled in any of the controversies that have swirled through the museum world in the last decade. In this new era, museums discovered to be holding stolen items face lawsuits and claims from foreign governments that can be costly both in legal fees and in the court of public opinion.
The MFA, which like many museums has had to return works in recent years, took special care in creating Reed’s post in 2010. She is the first and only endowed curator of provenance at an American museum.
In the past, the MFA had conducted research the same way many museums do. Individual curators with expertise in a specific area were asked to do research between their other duties, whether organizing exhibits or acquiring new works. Across the country, a handful of other museum professionals research the histories of artworks as independent consultants or as one of the tasks that make up their jobs.
“It’s something we can’t do constantly the way Victoria Reed is,’’ says Martha Wolff, the curator of European painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago. “Why is that? Time pressures.’’
Another issue is resources. What makes Reed special in the museum world is that her position, funded by MFA donor Monica S. Sadler, will not be cut from the museum’s budget when finances are tight.
“That a patron of the MFA recognized the importance of the issue makes Torie’s position unique,’’ said Nancy Yeide, the head of curatorial records at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. “That’s quite noteworthy and hopefully an impetus for others to do likewise.’’
A mystery story
Reed doesn’t spend all her time in libraries, scouring old auction catalogs. She also serves as the public face of the MFA’s efforts to properly vet art works.
One summer weekday, a group of college students, most of them art history majors, crowded around Reed in a gallery as she spun a fascinating, true tale involving Nazis, art dealers, and stolen paintings. It was like a mystery story, with the art detective hunting for clues.
Afterward, several approached with questions. Asked why they were so inspired, they didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t just the story. It was Reed herself.
Just 37, Reed, who goes by the first name “Torie,’’ is no dour researcher in Coke-bottle glasses. She is lively and easy to approach, an avid runner who favors colorful dresses and heels.
“You meet a lot of curators who aren’t ready to share why they’re so excited about what they do,’’ said Caitlin Costello, 21, an undergraduate majoring in art history at the University of Pennsylvania. “Just smiling and being animated, it’s amazing how much that helps get her message across.’’
The timing of Reed’s talk couldn’t have been better. Just a few days earlier, eight years of off-and-on research had culminated in the MFA’s dramatic announcement of recognition that “Portrait of a Man and Woman in an Interior,’’ an oil painting on a wood panel by the 17th-century Dutch painter Eglon van der Neer, had probably been stolen by the Nazis and passed through a New York gallery before ending up at the MFA in 1941.
The museum agreed to pay restitution to the heir of Jewish art dealer Walter Westfeld, who died in a Nazi death camp, and in exchange, the painting would remain on the MFA’s walls. The finding would give the museum a chance to show the world that it cared deeply about righting the wrongs of the past, when swashbuckling curators acquired paintings and sculptures without doing in-depth research on whether they had been stolen.
Standing in front of the painting in the MFA’s Art of Europe department, Reed told the students of her satisfaction in being able to shed light on an important era in history. Through her work, the public will now know about Westfeld, she said. A lengthy description of the painting’s path would hang on the wall next to the picture.
‘Geeky’ path to curatorship
Growing up outside Portland, Maine, Reed was an artsy and bookish kid.
Her younger sister, Mary Reed, still teases her for what she calls a geeky streak. To satisfy her physical education requirement, Torie Reed took part in a walking club. While other teenagers were out partying, Reed took language lessons at an Italian heritage center. When she was 16, she traveled to Siena, where she worked on watercolors.
“I joke that she’s always been an old lady,’’ says Mary Reed. “She’s more grown up than anybody else.’’
Torie Reed’s path to the MFA started at Sarah Lawrence College, where she earned her degree before getting her master’s and a doctorate in art history at Rutgers University. After college, Reed worked as a research assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, after that, served as a researcher at the Princeton University Art Museum.
She started at the MFA in 2003, hired as a research fellow for provenance in the Art of Europe department to look entirely at Nazi-era issues. It was an opportune time. Just a few years earlier, museum leaders had met in Washington, D.C., in a groundbreaking conference, to create the first real push for restitution for World War II thefts.
The MFA, like most US museums, had followed the common acquire-now, research-later philosophy of collecting. But in 2000, it took a dramatic step to address that. The museum put a list of works from its permanent collection with questionable acquisition histories on the Internet in a quest to solicit more information. That turned heads in the museum world. It also led victimized families, including the Westfelds, to contact the MFA.
“Most museums have their collections online,’’ says James Cuno, the former director of the Harvard University Art Museums and current director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. “What’s different in this case, and is to be commended, is that they identified some works and set them apart from others.’’
That’s where Reed’s job began. Working on Nazi-era claims, she found her knowledge of Italian, German, and French was helpful. So was her determination to pursue all leads, whether in the MFA’s archives or by traveling to Germany to scour rarely viewed auction records and newspaper articles.
During those years, Reed decided that the World War II cases were, in a way, more complicated than those involving works dating to Roman times.
“If something was looted out of the ground in Italy, it’s a pretty clear issue,’’ she said. “Some of the Nazi-era claims are accompanied by ownership questions that may not have a paper trail. Many of the key players may be deceased. You may be dealing with 10 different archives. And even if you have the pieces lined up, there many be disagreement about how to interpret those facts.’’
The facts were often undeniable. Under Reed, the MFA resolved several claims, starting in 2004 when the museum returned to a Polish woman a 15th-century Polish painting, “Virgin and Child,’’ that Reed determined had been plundered during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 before being purchased by the MFA in 1970. Later, the MFA returned a statue stolen in Dresden, Germany, and an embroidered panel from Italy and, after making restitutions, held on to a group of 17th-century tapestries and the van der Neer.
A detective with critics
Not all of Reed’s research has resulted in guilty verdicts.
The MFA fought to keep an Oskar Kokoschka painting, “Two Nudes (Lovers),’’ after a claim was filed in 2007 by an Austrian woman. After reviewing Reed’s research, the MFA decided it had legal title to the work and even filed a lawsuit, which it won in 2009, to confirm its rights.
That led to something Reed had never faced as a behind-the-scenes player: criticism.
Raymond Dowd, a New York lawyer who has filed lawsuits over works that he maintains were taken by the Nazis, disagreed with the Kokoschka finding, particularly as it affected another case he was pursuing. On his website earlier this year, Dowd called Reed “a curator of provenance - which happens to be a synonym for a launderer of stolen artworks.’’
In an interview, Dowd refused to back down. He said the MFA and Reed should publish online the details of their investigations. He believes the MFA is, like the entire US museum community, reluctant to reach out to victims of World War II-era art looting.
“What happened in Vienna in 1938 and 1939, you either believe in the Holocaust that took place in that period and the grip that Adolph Eichmann had on those people or you’re an American museum denying that reality,’’ he said. “And she’s at the forefront of that denial.’’
Dowd’s attack bothered her deeply, Reed acknowledges, but she refuses to counterattack.
“I know that I sound defensive and I’m trying, as I get older, to sound less defensive,’’ she said. “But I think there are a lot of loud voices out there that are inaccurate.’’
The next day, Reed asks that even that mild criticism be struck from the record. She doesn’t want to come off too strong.
She does defend the MFA, which she says shares the results of all its Nazi-era provenance research on its website, on gallery labels, and in gallery talks. The only exception is when there is a legal matter that includes correspondence that is privileged.
Her understated approach is typical of Reed. She wants the evidence from her research to speak for itself without telling her boss, MFA deputy director Katherine Getchell, how to respond.
That makes perfect sense to Getchell.
“Her job is not to be a policymaker or decision maker,’’ said Getchell. “We want her focused on research and analysis and looking at the different options.’’
Reed’s job often takes her to the MFA’s off-site library at Horticultural Hall. On a recent afternoon, she sat with her notes at a table examining art history books on site. She wants to know more about a Dutch painting by Johannes Glauber, which the museum acquired from a dealer in 1979 with little knowledge of its background. She was examining a bronze from the 13th century that’s in the MFA’s Islamic art collection. There were also several works the museum was considering acquiring; she said she couldn’t reveal what those were.
“In the ’40s and ’50s, we might ask a dealer where something came from,’’ she said. “Today, we require much more information. We look at cultural property law, check stolen art databases, import and export records. If there’s a doubt, we postpone acquisition until we can clear up the question.’’
Reed shuffled through the papers on the desk as the subject of the van der Neer came up. Though the claim had been settled, many questions remained. The MFA knows the painting was probably stolen, but there’s a gap in the records from the point when it disappeared in the late 1930s to its reappearance in New York in 1941. Reed was eager to fill in the blank.
“In this work,’’ she said, “you’re never done.’’
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Time Keeps On Slipping Into the Future
Sorry for the dearth of posts recently...I've been working on a project, wanted to devote all my time to it, and kept telling myself...it'll be done today so I can get back to blogging here tomorrow.
The next day it was... okay, it's definitely going to get done today....
Well, today it is done... so back to posting here on a daily basis tomorrow. (With the first post appearing tomorrow afternoon while I'm watching football!)
Thanks for your patience.
The next day it was... okay, it's definitely going to get done today....
Well, today it is done... so back to posting here on a daily basis tomorrow. (With the first post appearing tomorrow afternoon while I'm watching football!)
Thanks for your patience.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Austrian gallery ordered to return Nazi-stolen Romako works
From Austrian gallery ordered to return Nazi-stolen Romako works
VIENNA – Vienna's Albertina art gallery was told Tuesday to return six works by Anton Romako to the descendants of Jewish art collector Oskar Reichel, whose collection was stolen by the Nazis.
The Austrian culture ministry's art restitution council said that four of the works by the Austrian painter (1832-1839) had been bought by the Albertina gallery in 1939-40 and the two others after World War II.
Reichel, a renowned collector of Austrian art, died in Vienna in May 1943, four months after his wife Malvine Reichel had been deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
She survived the war and was liberated by the Red Army in 1945. Their two sons fled in 1939 but the oldest was murdered by the Nazis in 1940.
Under a 1998 restitution law, Austria has returned some 10,000 Nazi-plundered paintings to the descendants of their former owners.
Most notorious was a painting by Gustav Klimt, a 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, which the Austrian state was forced to return to the heirs of its previous owner in 2006 after a lengthy legal battle.
A Klimt landscape stolen by the Nazis and returned this year to the family of the Jewish owner sold for a huge $40.4 million at Sotheby's in New York last month.
VIENNA – Vienna's Albertina art gallery was told Tuesday to return six works by Anton Romako to the descendants of Jewish art collector Oskar Reichel, whose collection was stolen by the Nazis.
The Austrian culture ministry's art restitution council said that four of the works by the Austrian painter (1832-1839) had been bought by the Albertina gallery in 1939-40 and the two others after World War II.
Reichel, a renowned collector of Austrian art, died in Vienna in May 1943, four months after his wife Malvine Reichel had been deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
She survived the war and was liberated by the Red Army in 1945. Their two sons fled in 1939 but the oldest was murdered by the Nazis in 1940.
Under a 1998 restitution law, Austria has returned some 10,000 Nazi-plundered paintings to the descendants of their former owners.
Most notorious was a painting by Gustav Klimt, a 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, which the Austrian state was forced to return to the heirs of its previous owner in 2006 after a lengthy legal battle.
A Klimt landscape stolen by the Nazis and returned this year to the family of the Jewish owner sold for a huge $40.4 million at Sotheby's in New York last month.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Leonardo's Lady and the Quest For War Loot Restitution
From 8/11/11
From Huff Post England: Leonardo's Lady and the Quest For War Loot Restitution
The new Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at London's National Gallery opens tomorrow, however it has long been regarded as the highpoint of the city's Winter cultural attractions.
Through the gallery's own treasures and those on loan from the likes of the Louvre in Paris and St Petersburg's Hermitage, the show tells the tale of da Vinci's spell in the late 15th century as court painter to one of Renaissance Italy's most powerful men, Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan.
Thanks to the power of the image of Mona Lisa and the imagination of Dan Brown, the da Vinci brand will never lack box office appeal. But, just in case, curators for this new exhibition have used another of the artist's most recognisable works to help drive publicity.
Lady with an Ermine is one of only a handful of Leonardo portraits known to survive. Painted onto a small wooden panel with oils, it depicts Cecilia Gallerani, Sforza's teenage mistress, clutching a stoat. The animal is not thought to have been a random prop but chosen because Leonardo wished to add a further symbol of his subject's purity to please his paymaster. The ermine was believed to rather face death than soil its white winter fur.
Ironically, given the purity to which one of history's most famous polymaths was alluding more than five centuries ago, the painting itself has become one of many symbols of a much darker episode in history, one which stretches back 70 years.
It was one of an estimated 600,000 paintings stolen by Germany during a looting programme instigated by Hitler himself to stock what he intended to be the planet's largest museum in his boyhood home town of Linz.
Through forced sales or confiscations from Jewish collectors, a network of magpie collaborators and agents, and secret trades with renowned state collections anxious to protect their finest pieces, the Nazis acquired one-fifth of the world's fine art treasures.
At least for Lady with an Ermine, the trauma was not to last too long. It had been pulled from its hiding place in an outbuilding at the country home of its owner, the Polish prince Augustin Czartoryski, in December 1939. Just over five years later, it was safely recovered by the Allies from the haul seized from Reichskommissar Hans Frank, the Nazi's officer in charge of Poland, as he tried to flee to safety.
The most famous Leonardo of all was reputed to be among works retrieved in much more dramatic circumstances. While writing our book on the subject of war art loot, myself and Peter Harclerode discovered documents suggesting that 6,500 items, including the Mona Lisa, were down an Austrian salt-mine and only hours from being blown up by retreating Nazis when they were rescued by Allied secret agents.
However, even though the Czartoryskis had Lady with an Ermine returned to them, they are among families still fighting to get back many tens of thousands of other pieces of art stolen just before and during World War Two. Although the wartime owners have died, their heirs have combed archives and libraries as well as arguing in galleries and courtrooms in an attempt to win restitution.
There have been some high-profile successes but, sadly, they are exceptions. Given recent developments in Europe and the United States, any positive momentum looks like being stopped in its tracks even as new initiatives allow access to the sort of paperwork which might support restitution claims.
The US Supreme Court recently decided that California couldn't extend a statute of limitations which might give affected families more time to have missing works handed back to them. Sir Norman Rosenthal, the former leading curator at London's Royal Academy of Art, has called for an end to the restitution process, suggesting that it is not an effective way to erase a painful and destructive chapter in history.
Meanwhile, modern collectors seek to defend their ownership of disputed art by claiming that they had bought pieces in good faith. They include Andrew Lloyd Webber, who was allowed to auction a Picasso for £35 million last year after demands for its return from one Jewish family had halted a previous sale at Christie's auction house in New York.
Despite the potential narrowing of their chances for success and the passage of more than 60 years since the end of the Second World War, the families press on. In Amsterdam, Christine Koenigs is keen to trace more than 2,600 drawings and 46 Old Master paintings which had belonged to her grandfather. Her enquiries also extend to a portrait of van Gogh's physician which once held the title as the most costly work of art ever sold at auction.
Whether her long quest for justice enjoys the same sort of happy ending as those with whom the image of Cecilia Gallerani resides remains to be seen.
From Huff Post England: Leonardo's Lady and the Quest For War Loot Restitution
The new Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at London's National Gallery opens tomorrow, however it has long been regarded as the highpoint of the city's Winter cultural attractions.
Through the gallery's own treasures and those on loan from the likes of the Louvre in Paris and St Petersburg's Hermitage, the show tells the tale of da Vinci's spell in the late 15th century as court painter to one of Renaissance Italy's most powerful men, Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan.
Thanks to the power of the image of Mona Lisa and the imagination of Dan Brown, the da Vinci brand will never lack box office appeal. But, just in case, curators for this new exhibition have used another of the artist's most recognisable works to help drive publicity.
Lady with an Ermine is one of only a handful of Leonardo portraits known to survive. Painted onto a small wooden panel with oils, it depicts Cecilia Gallerani, Sforza's teenage mistress, clutching a stoat. The animal is not thought to have been a random prop but chosen because Leonardo wished to add a further symbol of his subject's purity to please his paymaster. The ermine was believed to rather face death than soil its white winter fur.
Ironically, given the purity to which one of history's most famous polymaths was alluding more than five centuries ago, the painting itself has become one of many symbols of a much darker episode in history, one which stretches back 70 years.
It was one of an estimated 600,000 paintings stolen by Germany during a looting programme instigated by Hitler himself to stock what he intended to be the planet's largest museum in his boyhood home town of Linz.
Through forced sales or confiscations from Jewish collectors, a network of magpie collaborators and agents, and secret trades with renowned state collections anxious to protect their finest pieces, the Nazis acquired one-fifth of the world's fine art treasures.
At least for Lady with an Ermine, the trauma was not to last too long. It had been pulled from its hiding place in an outbuilding at the country home of its owner, the Polish prince Augustin Czartoryski, in December 1939. Just over five years later, it was safely recovered by the Allies from the haul seized from Reichskommissar Hans Frank, the Nazi's officer in charge of Poland, as he tried to flee to safety.
The most famous Leonardo of all was reputed to be among works retrieved in much more dramatic circumstances. While writing our book on the subject of war art loot, myself and Peter Harclerode discovered documents suggesting that 6,500 items, including the Mona Lisa, were down an Austrian salt-mine and only hours from being blown up by retreating Nazis when they were rescued by Allied secret agents.
However, even though the Czartoryskis had Lady with an Ermine returned to them, they are among families still fighting to get back many tens of thousands of other pieces of art stolen just before and during World War Two. Although the wartime owners have died, their heirs have combed archives and libraries as well as arguing in galleries and courtrooms in an attempt to win restitution.
There have been some high-profile successes but, sadly, they are exceptions. Given recent developments in Europe and the United States, any positive momentum looks like being stopped in its tracks even as new initiatives allow access to the sort of paperwork which might support restitution claims.
The US Supreme Court recently decided that California couldn't extend a statute of limitations which might give affected families more time to have missing works handed back to them. Sir Norman Rosenthal, the former leading curator at London's Royal Academy of Art, has called for an end to the restitution process, suggesting that it is not an effective way to erase a painful and destructive chapter in history.
Meanwhile, modern collectors seek to defend their ownership of disputed art by claiming that they had bought pieces in good faith. They include Andrew Lloyd Webber, who was allowed to auction a Picasso for £35 million last year after demands for its return from one Jewish family had halted a previous sale at Christie's auction house in New York.
Despite the potential narrowing of their chances for success and the passage of more than 60 years since the end of the Second World War, the families press on. In Amsterdam, Christine Koenigs is keen to trace more than 2,600 drawings and 46 Old Master paintings which had belonged to her grandfather. Her enquiries also extend to a portrait of van Gogh's physician which once held the title as the most costly work of art ever sold at auction.
Whether her long quest for justice enjoys the same sort of happy ending as those with whom the image of Cecilia Gallerani resides remains to be seen.
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